Modern aircraft employ various on-board computer systems for performing a wide variety of operations such as avionics, maintenance functions and the like. On-board networks for many airplanes use private re-usable transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) addresses. These TCP/IP addresses (such as Request for Comment (RFC) 1917/1918) may not be routable in many internal enterprise computing networks. Additionally, on-board maintenance servers for certain aircraft networks (such as those utilizing an X-windows platform) may require the same source TCP/IP address to be retained throughout a network connectivity session. Disadvantageously, this precludes the ability to support Network Address Translation (NAT) since NAT requires changes to TCP/IP addresses during translation.
Moreover, the physical architecture for many airplane on-board computer systems has limits to the number of physical Ethernet ports that may be used for network connectivity. Further, in certain circumstances, each airplane is addressed with identical private TCP/IP addresses. Thus, this does not allow for a scalable, repeatable network design that provides connectivity to multiple airplanes, for example, in a factory or flight-test environment. Due to these limits in the physical architecture, a maintenance control unit (such as one implemented in a personal computer) may not be able to communicate with an airplane on-board maintenance server while also having connectivity with a separate secure internal network, such as the enterprise network for the airplane manufacturer. A communication method and system is needed which may solve one or more problems in existing airplane communication networks.